


In the Hall of the Mountain King

by steelphoenix



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Halloween 96, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelphoenix/pseuds/steelphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Music is what life sounds like.  ~Eric Olson</i><br/>A Halloween coincidence gives Brad - a star cellist - the most unusual instrument he's ever come across.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Hall of the Mountain King

**Author's Note:**

> A contribution for the [Halloween 96 Fic Fest](http://generation-kill.livejournal.com/657215.html). The prompt was [In the Hall of the Mountain King](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrIYT-MrVaI).
> 
> [Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, Prelude](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7edkwJsgN0&list=FLd1MaInGt-hA8YqFEJyWk9w&index=8&feature=plpp_video); this illustrates how I think Brad would play.

“...look, a musician’s instrument is his _life_ , I can’t just... get another one!” Brad slams his hand down on the airline’s so-called ‘Customer Service’ counter.

The woman there shrinks under his glare, clearly scared but holding her ground. “We’re very sorry about this, sir, but as I said, your luggage is currently in transit on Flight 96. It will be here at LAX in approximately six hours, allowing for connections; we can provide you facilities if you wish to wait.”

Brad leans over the counter, and hisses, “The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra expects me to be on stage, with that instrument, in three hours’ time. Contact me when it arrives.” He pulls out his wallet, slipping out a card, and slams it down on the counter. “The _moment_ it arrives, you understand?”

Not waiting for a reply, he turns, scooping up his suit bag and stalking off. His angry steps take him out of the terminal and into the chilly concourse. People brush past him, giving way easily to a tall, angry-looking man.

Right. First things first, try to find an instrument. He may be a star cellist, but his meteoric rise hadn’t given him much monetary recompense yet. He still had only one cello to his name, and had seen no reason to get another when the one from his childhood was still both functional and familiar; he could still make it sing like nothing else.

 _At least I still have my suit with me_. An instrument might be found, but a tuxedo for a man of his stature would be impossible at this short notice.

He sighs, fishing his cellphone out of his pocket and scrolling through his contact list until he finds the right number. “Hello, Nate?”

The first violin answers almost immediately, sounding worried. “Brad! We were wondering where you were! Your flight was late in?”

“Yes, but worse,” says Brad, with a sigh, his anger starting to drain, replaced with tiredness. “The dumbfucks have _lost my cello_.”

“They _WHAT?!_ ” Nate gasps, his voice rising an octave. He’s usually unflappable, but with recent events – two violinists and a viola retiring on short notice, and one of the cellists being pregnant and hormonal – the string section has been chaos, and everyone’s been stressed. He’d been reluctant to let Brad, their lead cellist, go to the Chamber Music Festival in New York, and it seemed that his fears had been borne out.

“It’s somewhere above Nebraska at the moment, but it’s not going to be here for another six hours,” snaps Brad. “Look, I’m sorry to do this to you, but could you just find me something to play?”

Brad can hear Nate taking a deep, calming breath over the phone, and then the first violin sighs. “It’s not your fault, Brad. I’ll see what I can pull out of storage. Get here as soon as you can.”

“Thanks, Nate, I appreciate it,” says Brad, and gets a brief acknowledgement before Nate hangs up. With another sigh, he heads out to the taxi stand to get a cab into the city.

\---

 

“They had a cello in storage at the Disney Concert Hall, we managed to get it taxied over,” is Nate’s greeting when Brad arrives in the rehearsal room at the Hollywood Bowl. He claps Brad on the shoulder, looking up at him with relief. “Just glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” replies Brad, giving the first violin a brief hug. “Couldn’t let you down. Now, the cello?”

“Over here,” says Nate, leading him to one side of the room. On a bench is a dilapidated cello case, its once-black leather grey with age, the edges tatty and frayed. One of the clasps and the handle are missing, but as Brad snaps it open, the familiar scent of varnish and rosin rises.

The cello that lies on the battered green felt is beautiful, its wood a rich, deep colour, almost mahogany with a hint of red, very unusual. The belly is less rounded than standard, and the f-holes are longer. Brad’s eyebrows raise, and then he frowns. This is a very unique cello. He runs his hand over the wood, feeling the smoothness of the varnish.

 _Hmm... mmm..._ For a second, he thinks someone is humming a tuning note. He turns to Nate, but the other man has turned away to talk to Mike, their lead double-bass.

He picks up the bow – somewhat threadbare – and fishes in the case pocket. Sure enough, there’s a stick of rosin, and he quickly tightens and rosins the bow. Picking up the cello, he sits down on the bench, extending the tail spike. As the cello rests across his knees, he plucks the strings.

 _La-la-la..._ Again, there is an echo of someone tuning. He shakes it away; weird, but now is not the time for it; he has about an hour to get used to this instrument.

“Nate, what’s first up?” he asks.

The first violin turns back, “Hall of the Mountain King; then the Nightmare Before Christmas Suite, then the Corpse Bride Arrangement, and ending with the Movie Themes Suite. A ‘special Halloween lineup’, Slatkin was quite keen on it over the Halloween week.”

Brad nods. “Sounds good.” He sets the cello down, resting the fingerboard across his shoulder. He strokes the bow across the strings; it’s perfectly in tune – strange for something that has been in storage. The hairs on the back of his neck are raising; something weird is going on.

He draws the bow across the strings in the first few notes of _In the Hall of the Mountain King_. The cello has a beautiful sound, but there’s a slight burr near middle-C. As he plays through the first section of the piece, the burr slides up and down the scale, like a voice is talking. Brad stops, but the sound of the cello is still echoing in his head, independent and completely without direction, sliding through _Hall of the Mountain King_ completely without Brad’s direction.

And then he looks up to see Mike and Nate looking down at the cello, faces white.

The cello is playing on its own.

“What...?” Brad gets out, and then the cello stops playing. There’s a voice in his head, insistent, _Play it through. Play it. Play it play it playitplayitplayplayPLAYPLAYPLAY_ – And the voice is strong, compelling, louder than the fear that is starting to well up.

He puts the bow to the strings again, plays the first few bars.

“Brad! Don’t – !” comes Mike’s worried voice, but it’s a fuzz in the background.

Brad leans on the bow, wringing emotion out of the sound, really _playing_ the piece, and the seconds tick away. Something warm is forming in the back of his mind, and his fingers fly on the strings.

There is a long silence as the last notes fade. Nate and Mike are looking down at Brad and the cello, worried.

 _Oh thank Christ! Someone can hear me!_ The voice is the same as the one humming the tuning note, the same one as the burr on the scale.

“What?” says Brad, completely taken aback. This was _deeply_ weird.

 _Deeply weird, my ass! I’m the one trapped in here, you giant retarded Viking. I need you to keep playing, so I can be set free._ The voice is quick and sarcastic.

Brad raises an eyebrow, resting his bow. He doesn’t get a bad vibe from this, more – warming. Almost instinctively, he trusts this... cello. “And if I do?” he says, quiet and almost under his breath.

 _I’ll be free and won’t bug you for the rest of your life? And trust me, now that you can hear me, you can’t get rid of me._ The voice laughs, then drops into sing-song. _I can’t get rid of you, either. We’re stuck with each other, daaarling!_

Brad snorts, thinking, _Well, I guess we see what happens_. He looks up, playing at casual. “Well, I think this instrument will be quite suitable.”

“Brad, _the cello was playing on its own,_ ” says Nate, his face still worried, but curious.

“It’s Halloween, I guess,” replies Brad, “Appropriate. I’ve been advised that should I continue to play this instrument, it will free the person trapped in it.”

Nate goes white again. Mike is staring at him like he’s grown another head. Gina, the pregnant cellist, and her husband Poke, are gaping. Doc, the tympanist, snorts sceptically.

 _I’ll be free at midnight on Halloween – if you play at least an hour every day. Please, in the name of fluffy bunnies and kittens, DO IT!_ says the voice. _By the way, I’m Ray. My full name is Joshua Ray Person, but if you tell these guys that, I will_ hurt _you. When I’m corporeal again, of course._

Brad sniggers and nods. The idea of a cello trying to beat him up is just too funny not to laugh. “He advises me he is called Ray, and that he will be free at midnight on Halloween, should I play an hour every day.”

There’s a long silence, and then Doc says, “This is going to be an interesting week.”

 

\---

 

At 11:55pm on the 31st, Brad takes Ray out of his case in the rehearsal room. Shedding his tuxedo jacket and rolling up his sleeves, he leans the cello against his shoulder, breathing in the familiar and comforting scent of varnish and rosin. His old cello was nowhere near as responsive as Ray – he’d played the other instrument, Ray muttering in his head the whole time, and given it up pretty quickly.

Ray would be freed – whatever that meant – and he was torn. Part of him was glad, but he’d actually enjoyed having Ray around; his quick wit and humorous observations had made Brad laugh a good deal more than he was used to, made him happier. He’d miss Ray.

 _Oh, don’t be such a baby._ Ray’s voice is tart, and a trifle impatient. _It’s been fun inside your head, but you’ll like me much better when I’m not a cello_.

Most of the rest of the orchestra surrounds him, instruments in hand. They were all friends – it was hard to not be friends in an orchestra, and for all that Brad was often aloof and cold, they were still there for him – here for him – when it mattered. They’d seen him throughout the week, and it wasn’t hard to believe Brad when they’d all seen the cello play itself more than once.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like us to play?” he asks Ray quietly, subdued.

 _You have to play In the Hall of the Mountain King – you have to be playing that at midnight,_ says Ray, sounding a little subdued himself, _But then... if it doesn’t work –_ hisvoice catching like a tear – _could you play Bach’s Cello Suite No.1? The Prelude?_

“It’ll work,” mutters Brad, _believing_ as fiercely as he can. He _wants_ Ray to be free.

“Brad?” says Nate, quietly, “What do we need to play?”

“Take a guess,” replies Brad, quiet. “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”

Nate nods, and says, “Okay, people, you know this one.” He lifts his bow and begins the count in.

Brad strikes the first note, and the other cellos and the bassoons follow him. The violins mix in with pizzicato, the horns and woodwinds folding underneath, the music flowing out and speeding up. The last repeated phrases, punctuated by Doc’s tympani and Chaffin’s cymbals, arrive sooner than Brad expects.

As the last notes fall, Brad looks up at the clock. The tympani roll, the cymbals crash, and the minute hand hits midnight.

There is a _twang_ as all of Ray’s strings break, the bow disintegrating. Brad feels a warmth suffuse him, and he gasps.

The cello lifts, the broken strings pouring out streams of black and green light, and the shape of the cello begins flickering and shimmering, changing and morphing from wood to flesh, ebony to bone, varnish to skin, and there is the echo of the last few bars of music.

Suddenly, the light disappears, and Brad has a lapful of naked, curled-up young man, dark-haired and lean, tattooed. Brad instinctively wraps his arms around him, catching before he can fall over.

There is a hushed moment where the orchestra just breathes –

– and then Ray – because it _must_ be Ray, it _has_ to be Ray – uncoils a little, with a happy groan. He stretches out his arms, and then brings them back, swivelling around to rest them on Brad’s chest. His eyes are the same deep brown as the wood of the cello.

“Hi,” he says, his voice husky, rusty. “I’m Ray.”

“Yeah, I know,” replies Brad, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of everything that has just happened. Not knowing what to do, he leans in, resting his forehead against Ray’s.

Then Ray grabs his face and kisses him, and it’s so good. Brad opens his mouth to Ray’s clever tongue, tasting, his senses filled with Ray – his woody scent, his lithe, lean body, the quiet hum of pleasure he makes as he twines his arms around Brad’s shoulders.

Then he leans back, and his smile is wide and wicked. Brad laughs. “So _now_ are you going to tell me how you got in there in the first place?”

“It’s a long story,” says Ray, laughing, and then coughs, exhaling a little cloud of wood-dust.

“I’ve got time,” replies Brad, as the orchestra begins to crowd around them, coats being offered to Ray, Brad getting slapped on the back heartily.

Ray looks over at him, and those dark eyes smile at Brad – and he know that he does have time, and that Ray will give it to him. __


End file.
